BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 24 JULY 1920
BRACERS 19690. ALS. McMaster. SLBR 2: #338
Edited by S. Turcon and N. Griffin. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
The Manor House
Garsington
Oxford1
Sat. night 24 July 1920

Beloved

Such a wonderful letter2 I found from you here — Your love is the most precious thing that has ever come into my life — and it has helped me as nothing else could — it has changed everything for me — you can see for yourself how much less I have of the tangles and spectres that used to haunt my mind — I will try to write out to you the sort of way Russia has made me feel — but if I am to do it, I must forget to be literary and just write to you, simply and quickly —

The effect of Russia was twofold — one part, which wears off quickly, was due to the mere horror of what I saw;  the other part, which goes deeper and lasts longer, was due to doubts as to the possibility of the things I care for and feelings of impotence for all who feel as I do about the world.

I will begin with the smaller thing: the actual impression of Russia, because the other grew out of that. There were small things that I had to keep on telling myself were small things:  the destruction of beauty, especially in Petrograd, through the destruction of luxurious living — it was obvious that the Russian aristocrats had been people with a feeling for beauty, like almost all Russians, and now all that was dead: their houses stood empty and deserted, the things they had gathered were destroyed or dispersed. The Bolsheviks, for the most part, rejoiced in this, and when one realized the appalling cruelty of the old régime one could not wonder, and yet the contrast of the drab present and the coloured past was painful. Then I looked into the eyes of people in the streets of Petrograd, and in all I saw that look of strain that I had come to know in soldiers home from the front — a look like that of a mystic, that comes of a life in which instinct is thwarted. I thought this was due to hunger; I said so to Zalkind,3 a scientific doctor and prominent Bolshevik, and he said no, it was not hunger, it was longing for rest, mental rest, because the Bolsheviks compelled the people to face new ideas and new habits, and would not allow them to live naturally. I don’t know if he was right; but Petrograd and Moscow both made the impression of cities living under an intolerable strain, like a man compelled to sit or stand in a strained position by a threat of death if he moves. This was unavoidable owing to the war and the blockade — but the communists didn’t notice it (except Zalkind, fresh from abroad) and were as happy as kings amid a tortured population.

I minded the happiness of the communists as much as the unhappiness of the population. They had power, they had an army to play with, they could flout the most powerful nations; and not long ago they were hunted refugees. And now the people who had hunted them were hunted themselves, if they were not killed. So all was well. True, the population suffered, but what of that? I found almost no human kindness among Bolsheviks, either to individuals or to the mass.  They had their idea, which they were carrying out, and the misery by the way was nothing to them. Seeing Gorky4 soon after I first arrived convinced me that I was not imagining things, because he obviously felt Russia as I did, or rather with that great intensity that came of his being Russian. Never have I seen spiritual suffering so great as his.

I found the Bolsheviks totally indifferent to the individual, thinking in terms of classes and epochs. I found them indifferent to all the things of instinct, leaving no place for affection or love in their scheme of life, caring only for economic goods, valuing only the art that helped their politics and the science that increased material well-being. I found that I disagreed with their ideals even more than with their practice. It is easy to find excuses for their suppression of freedom, for conscription and forced labour and the destruction of free thought. But I did not find that they deplored the necessity for those things; on the contrary, I felt they welcomed it, and would go on in the same way as long as they possibly could. They have no respect for the free play of the human spirit. They have sexual appetites, but no love; children, but no parental affection; official art, but no use for the artist who is not subservient to their purposes; official science, but a profound contempt for the pursuit of truth. Everything disinterested they regard as “bourgeois”. If you are not “bourgeois”, you will care only for material things, and for propaganda, nominally as a means to the communist millennium,a but really as a way of maintaining the power of the ruling class. The best of them are ascetics, and like all energetic ascetics, pursuing power with all the energy that comes of thwarting the desire for enjoyment. The others pursue power simply, and secure also what they can in the way of pleasure.

Propaganda got on my nerves to such an extent that I did not know how to endure it.  Their speeches, their papers, their literature, their military bands and parades, the whole of their education, were devoted with an intensity that can hardly be imagined to the one purpose of making people Marxians and admirers of the Bolsheviks. The Marxian creed is at its best very jejune: nothing matters except economics; men are to be considered, not as individuals, but merely as members of their class; inevitably the whole world will soon become communist, and then there will be no call for further progress except in the way of technical improvements in methods of production, leading to a greater number of consumable commodities. The intellectuals whom I saw complained bitterly of the atmosphere of propaganda, and I felt that in such an atmosphere nothing disinterested could exist except by way of revolt and protest. There is no room in their system, in theory, whatever there may be in practice, for the attempt to understand the world, which is philosophy and theoretical science; for the attempt to embody and create the sensible vehicles of delight, which is art; for the consciousness of mystery and human impotence, which is the root of religion; or for the intimate union of spirit which is love, and in which the loneliness of our separated existences is mitigated. All these things, the Bolsheviks would say, are the luxuries of the idle rich, which busy people have no time to think of. All these things, they would say, might well be abolished without harm, provided every one had enough to eat. But I rebel: I feel we eat to live, not live to eat; and to live is to feel in some degree the splendour of what they despise.

By a cruel stoke of fate, those who have to endure this brutal theory are Russians — sensitive and wayward artists, people in whom the religious impulse is of amazing strength, men and women capable of suffering beyond the capacity of the more energetic nations of the West, because centuries of oppression have taught them to sit down under misfortune instead of rebelling against it.

In order to understand what I was seeing, I emptied myself of my own personality, and made myself merely receptive. There grew up in me a consciousness of two opposing types:  one, energetic, aiming only at attainable material ends, dominant and clever, contemptuous and incapable of understanding; the other, sensitive, impractical, passive, caring for art and religion more than for life or anything material. My whole being went out to the second type; I felt their suffering as if it were my own, and I knew that they, not the others, had capacityb to create the sort of things that I believe redeem human life from utter worthlessness. But I had to stand by passively, watching them being tortured by those who were nominally of my party, and with whom I had to live in daily intimacy. The pain of it drove me to the verge of insanity, and made me utterly indifferent to the statistics and political talk that the rest of our party thought important.

So much for the minor despair.

The major despair was far worse. I observed that only the energetic can hope for political influence, and that, as a rule, only those who love domination are energetic. I realized that any attempt to improve the world politically rouses fierce opposition, and that only people with all the Bolshevik defects can hope to combat the opposition successfully, while only people utterly unlike the Bolsheviks could make any good use of victory. So the whole political method of seeking progress came to seem useless. Conflict requires organization and tyranny, which destroy the individual; but the preservation of the individual seems to me the one really important thing. But absence of conflict is only to be got by submission to existing tyrannies, which destroy the individual equally, except for a fortunate few. I see no way out except the gradual development of kindliness that comes of long times without desperate conflict; and so pacifism, however slow, seems to me the only method.

I could say much more about the major despair, but it is too late. I will write more another time.

I will look out for you at Liverpool Str.5 at 2.5 —  Beloved, I shall be happy to be with you — I wish I could tell you what your love means to me — I feel all the universe might crack, but always you are there, beside me, with love and strength — I feel your spirit walking beside me in all sorrows and disasters — The sense of comradeship has grown deeper and deeper with the lapse of time — It is through you that my life is a fortunate one — What it would be without you I cannot imagine —

Bless you my Heart’s Life —

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200691. Colette described this as “BR’s very important letter about the Bolsheviks” (document 200690). BR developed these ideas in his book, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920; B&R A34).

• 2

  wonderful letter All that remains is a brief note welcoming him to Garsington (c.22 July, BRACERS 113211).

• 3

  Zalkind Aaron Borisovich Zalkind (1889–1936), a psychologist who was one of the architects of Soviet education policy.

• 4

  Seeing Gorky Maxim Gorky, the pen name of Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (1836–1936). BR visited Gorky, who was ill, on 15 May 1920. Gorky was trying to preserve pre-revolutionary works of art from destruction.

• 5

  at Liverpool Str. Colette had written in the brief note (BRACERS 113211) that she would meet him at Liverpool Street station, at the place where the cars draw up. BR had already contacted a hotel in Clacton, Essex for rooms. The train was to leave Liverpool Station at 2.15 p.m.

Textual Notes

• a

  millennium editorially corrected from millenium

• b

  capacity above deleted power